Leaving for Oaxaca, We Thought – September 3, 2006
After five days in Puerto Escondito we had settled into a nice routine, but, again, we knew we had to keep moving. Also, we felt like, since we had mostly hugged the coast so far, we may have missed out on some of the Mexican culture in the inland cities. We decided to visit the city of Oaxaca to the north to explore some ruins, see the 15th century architecture and visit the nearby village of El Tule, which is reportedly home to the largest tree in the world. The map indicated Oaxaca was only about 100 miles away as the crow flies, so we took off without checking the guides closely, expecting a two hour drive at most. A gas station attendant told us the trip would take 4 hours but I doubted it since we should make better time than the buses and pickup truck cabs of the area.
Just outside of town, however, the road quickly turned mountainous, rough and very windy. We tried to make good time but the conditions just wouldn’t let us. Besides the bumps, the road would turn sharply in one direction almost in a full circle, then back the opposite way just as far. After an hour we had only gone about 20 miles! I was frustrated and continued to drive faster around the curves until with all the twisting and jerking from side to side, Jenny was really ill. When we pulled over for her to get sick, we were passed by a pickup truck taxi so full of people there was a guy actually standing on the back bumper hanging on! We started to realize how long the drive might take. Jenny tried driving to help her stomach but that just made me feel sick. When we read a little further in the guides we found out it can take 8 or 9 hours depending on road conditions, which caused us to pull over and question just what we were getting ourselves into. We had planned to visit Oaxaca just for the day and return the same evening or early the next morning. Already feeling pretty bad and realizing we could either a) drive at a crawl to not get sick and suffer an 8 hour trip, or b) keep trying to make decent time and lose the rest of our breakfast, we finally decided to turn around, admitting defeat to Highway 131 to Oaxaca. We have been so used to calculating drive times based on how long it would take on I-4 in Orlando, but we’re not in Orlando.
An hour later, we pulled back into our same hotel to the laughs of the desk clerk, got our old room back, and rested our nauseous stomachs. We ate lunch at a familiar place and decided to try the easier coastal road heading to the next town South instead the next day.
Tags: Travel
pcschroeder
Leave a Reply